Team Handball Has It All…
That’s the start of the headline on my piece in the sports section of yesterday’s New York Times. The rest of it: Except American Interest.
Bemused friends and NPR listeners are familiar with my longstanding infatuation with team handball, a sport that has nothing to do with guys in wifebeaters smacking a tiny blue ball against a wall in Brooklyn, or even my old pal Jake Plummer. As I mention in the Times piece, I fell in love with the sport when I was an 18-year-old intern covering the Empire State Games in 1981 for WVOX radio, the local radio station in New Rochelle, N.Y. I re-fell in love while covering the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.
As I’ve noted before in the WSJ and on NPR (repeatedly), team handball is a seven-on-seven court sport that embodies all things American. You run, pass, dribble, throw (fast), block, jump and set picks. There’s strategy, finesse, power and speed. It’s violent and high-scoring. Yet handball — only the insecure feel compelled say “team” — is one of only three sports in which the U.S. has never won an Olympic medal.
I believe this is a national tragedy. I believe the president and Congress should allocate stimulus money to handball. I believe every school gym, from sea to shining sea, should be covered with Gerflor Taraflex courts and stocked with Cawila Pro-90 balls. I believe every no-chance D-I (and II and III) basketball and football and baseball player – and some still youngish ex-NFL quarterbacks and Double-A third basemen and D-League power forwards, too — should be directed to USA Team Handball and told that this is their national duty, and their destiny. While I’m at it, memo to Mark Cuban: Your best player loves the sport. You once employed the brother of an Icelandic national-team player. You run a TV network. Start a league!
When America ascends to its rightful place atop the Olympic handball podium, then — and only then — can we call ourselves the greatest sports country in the world. (Well, then and when we win the World Cup, which will happen in my lifetime.)
Tags: team handball